Working in First Actuarial’s actuarial team

What does the actuarial team do?

We help pension scheme trustees and employers manage their pension schemes.

We work with trustees to make sure that they can pay all the benefits promised to scheme members. This involves grappling with huge uncertainties. How will inflation affect those payments in future? And how long will the scheme have to pay each scheme member, or in starker terms, when will they die? Actuarial work tries to make sense of those uncertainties, to help trustees decide how best to fund retirement benefits.

For employers, it’s more about managing risk. Employers want to know that the pension promises they make to staff won’t cost the company more than expected.

What does career progression look like?

The traditional actuarial career path goes from trainee graduate to Scheme Actuary, but there are other options along the way.

As an actuarial trainee, once you have 1-2 years’ experience, you’ll be progressing through exams while doing most of the standard calculations and valuations with minimal assistance.

With 3-4 years’ experience, you’ll start checking the work of more junior trainees. You might start to meet clients, particularly if you have a future consultancy role in mind. And you’re likely to be studying for more specialist exams.

The time it takes to qualify as an actuary varies – the exams are tough so it’s not unusual to fail one or two. But once you qualify, you’ll be a highly valued member of the actuarial team. You’ll know your own clients well, and you’ll be managing workloads and services.